Slashdot Mirror
Retro Vision
dncsky1530 writes "The Sydney Morning Herald reports: It babysat generations, distracted countless teenagers from homework and, as Homer Simpson sagely observed about television, became our 'teacher, mother, secret lover'. Sure, the shows may have been ludicrous - think Webster, The A-Team, Charles In Charge - but they became part of our lives nonetheless. So what do you do when they end? Immortalise them online. At least, you do if you're a diehard fan - and there are plenty of them out there. Look up a show, any show, and the odds are there'll be at least one fan site, possibly with a tinny version of the soundtrack playing in the background and certainly with photos galore, plot lines, trivia as well as 'where are they now?' information on the actors."
Worst story ever.
I have been pwned because my
the popularity and fanaticism of family guy on the web contributed to it getting put back on the air.
Jump the shark site has info about hundreds and hundreds of TV shows, and the point at which they started going south.
Indefinitely Detained US Citizen
http://www.tvtome.com/list/all.html
Very extensive site for tv shows animated or otherwise includes episode lists & guides as well as all people accociated with them.
It's not my site but one I consult regularly.
The GEEK shall inherit the earth...
We need the wisdom of Herman's Head now, more than ever.
- Comic Book Guy.
Someday someone will come up with a fansite for Slashdot, remembering when it used to be about news for nerds, stuff that matters.
...is that most of the TV shows I loved as a kid are best left as fond memories. Trying to watch even one episode of them again as an adult wasn't the enjoyable dose of nostalgia that I expected-- instead I was just sitting there thinking, 'Wow, this is so corny, how did I ever think this was a cool show?' I'm talking about stuff like CHiPs, Knight Rider, The Dukes of Hazzard, etc.
If "I Love the 80's" has given you the urge to set your TiVo to pick up a few episodes of some show they talked about, trust me-- ignore that urge.
...why the internet should be destroyed.
To answer the question "So what do you do when they end", one only needs to look at the ending of Truman Show.
People just find the remote and switch channel.
Funny enough though, Truman Show itself has plenty of fan sites immortalizing the show.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
"Hey, there's a Simpsons quote in it! I've never seen that on Slashdot before, it must be newsworthy!" - michael
Sure, I spent my early years watching Mister Rogers and Gi Joe. Then came Webster, the A-Team and Dukes of Hazard. Then came Gi joe and Transformers. Then came Duck Tales and Saved by the bell. Then came Porn and the Screensavers on Tech TV. Thank you for making me so messed up.
One day, at a science fiction con, I was glancing across one of those large tables full of videotapes of, shall we say, dubious provenance, when I noticed, at the left edge of a box full of old TV shows, a tape labelled "AIR WOLF / THE A-TEAM".
I'm somewhat ashamed to say that my initial thought was, "That has got to be the worst bit of slash ever written."
For those who don't know, 'Jumping the Shark' is a reference to an episode in 'Happy Days' in which at the end of the show, the fonze is shown trying to water-ski a jump over a pool of sharks, in order to get more people to watch the following weeks episode which will show if he makes it. A reference to a show 'jumping the shark' means that whatever made that show unique and watchable is gone/going and thus the show must resort to gimmicks to keep it interesting.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
Epguides.com
TV Tome
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
who posted this story....
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
One site they forgot to mention was Digital Archive Project. They use a P2P community for the legal trading of cancelled shows. They're very good about removing things that go to video or are otherwise re-sold. It's kinda nice to see someone using P2P for something legal and worthwhile. Lots of animated series, comedy shows, and sci-fi/fantasy series. (the. Worth a click.
"Not all who wander are lost" -- JRR Tolkien
Ya know, you sit back and watch reruns of "A-Team", "Knight Rider", "Greatest American Hero", etc (only when you're sick in bed, of course...) and go "holy crap, how in the hell did I watch this?" You laugh as bullets go flying everywhere and miss people, but cars explode. Or when you see the hood of the General Lee (Dukes of Hazzard for you kids that don't know) get crumpled to all hell from jumping over a dirt pile (huh?) but then it's all fixed as they speed down the road. I sure get a good laugh.
BUT...in 20 years when people look back at OUR shows, they're gonna think we're a bunch of morons. Ohhhhh..."American Idol" is amazing! Or today's "reality" shows like "I Married a 7'3" Midget" and such. THAT'S going to be scary...looking back at today's stuff. Egads...
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
We live in a world where some people are literally obsessed with TV (Probably a fair deal of \.ers. People actually go home on Friday nights to make sure they catch the new episode of whatever. It's really sad when a website dedicated to saving the TV show Angel (http://www.renewangel.com/) is considered a charity! Maybe it is a great show (try not to laugh...) but honestly...that money could be used to...I don't know...fight cancer?
Every windows user is a sadomasochist.
"idiot box"
I prefer Shit Pump
If you thought the Dukes of Hazzard and Kight Rider were bad... it's a far cry from "Neighbours" and the Australian "Young Talent Time".
"Full House" is slow torture compared to "Young Talent Time".
There was a time for everything 80s... and that was in the 80s.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
A while back, a bunch of us, for whatever reason, were arguing what the Hamburgler used to say. Whether is was "robble robble", or "rabble rabble". We debated this for 5 minutes, no fooling. Just kept going on and on, until someone suggested, "Why don't you just find out at a Hamburgler fan site?".
After that sentence, we all just fell silent. It was an absolutely strange suggestion when you thought about it, but we also realized that they probably do exist.
And lo and behold, Google didn't just find one, it found about a dozen. We laughed, both at the idea of googling for it, and the sad truth that there are Hamburgler fansites out there.
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For a lot of classic shows you can find them on kazaa if the dvds not out yet (eventually every show ever will be avalible on dvd). I've got old Doctor Who episodes, Quantum Leap, every episode of Sliders, some A-Team eps, along with Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy and a few dozen other shows. And before anyone starts a flamewar, yes it is copyright infingment, but where else am i going to find Daria or Greg the Bunny or Roswell with the original soundtrack intact. It all evens out since i own the first 2 seasons of Farscape on DVD, both Family Guy sets, Chappelles Show, Clerks the Animated Series, Firefly, Cowboy Bebop (i do feel a little guilty because my cowboy bebop set is a bootleg, but i bought it from amazon, so i blame them.) and some others...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
When the autobots fire a laser beam, decepticons really get it up the ass.
It still severely lacked in the fatality department. The Autobots and Decepticons must have been piloting non-lethal weaponry for UN peacekeepers. If it was really necessary for the plot, someone would be knocked down with a smoking hole in him until the next scene. Otherwise the consequences were "Hey! That really scorched my paint!" or something.
The movie had some fatality it but only characters from the old line of toys bought it in the first twenty minutes. I think the idea was you were supposed to throw your dead Transformers in the trash and go buy some new ones. Well, Starscream died a bit later but they trot his ghost back out in afternoon programming so you could go buy Starscream again.
I remember once getting bored and channel surfing. This was before the days of remote controls, so I surfed the old fashioned way by turning the dial.
Anyway, I stumbled across this bouncer competition. It's not every day that you get to see a televised competition of big ugly dudes hoisting drunks out the saloon door. I can't remember if this was the nationals or internationals. Anyway, this especially ugly dude named "Mr. T" won.
That was his fifteen minutes of fame. But that was too short for him, so he stretched that fifteen minutes into half a decade. First he fights Sylvester Stallone in Rocky. Very cheesy. I was thinking, "Hey, your fifteen minutes are over!" Then he shows up on A-Team. Come on! This guy couldn't act his way out of a paper bag!
His career finally stuttered, stalled, and crashed into Florida swampland after a particularly atrocious Barbara Walters interview.
Epilogue: I thought the ghost of Mr. T had been laid to rest. But I was wrong. An CS professor with a bad sense of humour was describing an algorithm to my class, when he suddenly jabbed his pointer at the chalkboard, right at a meta-variable, and loudly announced: "I pity da foo!"
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!